Without any impetus to break in either direction, natural gasfutures continued to subsist on a steady diet of range-boundtrading yesterday at the New York Mercantile Exchange. But incontrast to Tuesday’s session, which featured the market closingnear its high trade for the day, Wednesday’s session was dominatedby selling that ushered the prompt August contract down 3 cents to$2.146. Estimated volume was light, with only 44,985 contractschanging hands.

“Twice [Wednesday] morning speculative accounts tried to pushthe market through nearby support at $2.20, but they were unable toeven match [Tuesday’s] high,” a New York broker said. Once themarket could not make new highs, it was pressured lower, hecontinued.

Another source added that buyers were hesitant ahead of therelease of weekly supply data, which has been the source ofconsiderable market banter this week. “Storage estimates have beenratcheted down from earlier in the week. I heard people talkingabout 70 Bcf on Monday, but this afternoon 45s and 55s were beingthrown around.”

Last night the American Gas Association settled the dispute bysaying that 59 Bcf was injected into underground storage facilitieslast week. And although that figure fell somewhere within the wideswath of expectations, it fell drastically short of last year’s 93Bcf build. Storage now stands at 2,161 Bcf, 17 Bcf less than 1998.

However, despite notching its first year-on-year deficit in 18months, the futures market rumbled lower in last night’s Accesstrading session. At 6 p.m. (Est) the August contract had slipped anadditional 3.6 cents to $2.110.

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